Punishment
by Robin Siskin
Summary: The desert may be merciful in comparison to unrequited emotions, but even she has disgust for those who do not pay their dues. [Lingcentric, Ling x Ran Fan ish, AU, mangaverse, oneshot][Spoilers for chapters 54 and on]


**A/N –** Long, bizarre, confusing extended metaphor. Bear with me, please. I'm quite proud of it. Feel free to ask me if you have any questions, and if you don't like something, drop me a review about it. Please don't read if you aren't caught up on the manga (or at least don't know the major big super important thing that happens to Ling), you'll spoil your manga. If you're caught up, read on! Enjoy. It's what I wrote it for, anyways. References to Frank Herbert (w00t), but not by any means a crossover. He's a legend. Dune is like the Sci-fi Bible.

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His face is white under the fierce golden glow of the sun, but he's laughing anyways, a full, throaty sound that is not at all like the jittery, mincing walk he's adopted because his feet are blistered and burnt from the scorching hot sand. There will be scars later, if he would allow the blisters time to heal, but he doesn't really care. When he dies, out here alone in the desert, there will be no body left for anybody to identify, not even bones; nobody will care about a few scars on the soles of his feet.

Yes, he will die alone in this desert that has become his life. Fire purifies, everybody knew that, and the desert that his life has become is not much different from fire. The temperatures are not the same, but the desert carries the same raw fury that fire carries. The flames that burnt the a certain sin into ashes befitting the punishment she would have received in Hell were full of rage and pain, the anguish of a certain Colonel, and the sand that grits in between his toes – tiny granules of insignificant pain - is the same, except this desert does not simply carry the rage of a single person, nor does it necessarily carry simply anger. It carries the passion of would-be lovers who died unrequited, the furor of scholars and alchemists who died with their goal just a little bit farther away, the deep hurt of mothers whose children were taken away…the deep hurt of mothers who were taken away from their children.

This anguish is much more potent than simple wrath. It can embody itself in the wind and send grains of sand flying at his face to cut easier than any knife, cut through even bone if it finds it necessary. It can dig itself into dripping wounds, keep them from coagulating properly, make them fester. Simple wrath can be taken care of with a little thing called revenge. Can a person take revenge for something that was almost entirely his own fault?

The maroon stains on his clothing and the erratic, fleeting scarlet trail behind him say no.

Ran Fan would have said yes. Ran Fan would have repeated steadily over and over that he had done what he had deemed to be right at the time, that he had done what he thought was best for their country. And, in a way he had. But with his body (it had been Greed's at the time, but he had been watching the whole time god he had been watching), atrocities had been committed. And there had been blood. Innocent blood. Some of it still stained his clothes; some of it was still in his hair. There had been some under his nails when he regained control, but that he had scrubbed out. He had scrubbed his hands so hard that they had bled, themselves, but he didn't really care. Better to touch Ran Fan with hands that had been baptized in his own blood (human blood, then, not some demon thing's blood) than to touch her with hands that were still crawling with the filth of what they had done. Better to let them bleed away the sin. Bleed away the pain.

And he had touched her, eventually. At first there had been anger on her part, and then suspicion, and then, as she realized that it was him and not some thing that called itself Greed and housed in his body, delight. It had not lasted for very long. He did not speak, could not, not for five minutes, and during that time she pulled her arm away (a flesh and blood arm, he couldn't bring himself to touch the metal (automail?) one that graced her other side) from his hand, as if she was aware of the terrible things that those hands had done (much worse than touching her breast once when they were younger, much worse than just killing somebody because it was necessary to), and it had fallen to his side, limply. He had said some thing, some foolish little thing like, "Ran Fan, I…" and she had turned away, her hair swinging into her eyes. He had turned away, too, then, and walked off, and didn't stop even when she called out for him to stop. She didn't say his name. He didn't blame her.

Ran Fan is not here now. She probably would have liked to be here, but there is no possibility that he will allow somebody to share the punishment with him now. Those guilty of Greed are boiled alive in Hell, just as those guilty of Lust are burnt, those guilty of Envy are submerged in freezing water, and those guilty of Sloth are thrown into snake pits. There is no doctrine anywhere that supports the idea that their loved ones are there for them as they suffer for all eternity. Why should it be any different with him?

What is the punishment for his sin? What _is _his sin? There are so many of them, that he supposes that they had to come up with a new one…and here it is. Here he is, being eaten alive by unrequited emotions, being consumed by the desert in a way that Frank Herbert would have died to see, except for Ling there will be no merciful death by sand-worm. Unrequited emotions are not as merciful as the desert herself is. She will accommodate them, of course, even if she herself would have ended a death much sooner. The desert is harsh, not cruel.

Unrequited emotions are cruel.

Other people might have wondered at the fairness of the whole thing. Edward Elric (the bean) might have started yelling at equivalent exchange. For the Elric brothers, maybe a punishment such as this would not be an equivalent exchange. They had already paid the debt for their sins. Ling had not.

So he does not wonder if he is not being tortured more than necessary, just as he does not wonder if it was not his fault that his body was used to do so many things. There is no little voice that says "even if you didn't let Greed in, he would have forced himself in anyways." There is no little voice telling him that even if he was aware of what was happening, he did not have control of his body and it is irrelevant. He knows and accepts that the sins his body committed are entirely his fault – and even if they aren't, it is his body, and as the current owner of that body, he must make sure that it pays its dues.

His legs give out, and he falls to his knees. He examines his feet (his shoes were gone long ago, devoured by the sand in the quick way that his corpse will be when his heart finally stops), brushes a few grains of sand out of a few of the lacerations and gets back up. The pain does not matter. He has nowhere to go – is, in fact going nowhere – but he must keep walking, must at least keep standing. For his body's sake.

For his honor's sake.

The desert may be merciful in comparison to unrequited emotions, but even she has disgust for those who do not pay their dues. He looks around, wiping some sweat that isn't there off his forehead (he stopped sweating long ago and supposed it was just another part of his punishment), as if he expects the Lady of the Desert to appear in front of him, mouth frowning but blue-within-blue eyes smiling, a milky-white knife in her hand to spill his blood (water) and allow him to die positive that his debt his been paid. No such thing is going to happen, of course, and he will not die until the debt has been paid. He knows this, and takes comfort in the fact that he is taking responsibility for his actions when it counts the most.

Another harsh wind picks up, as if those violent, unrequited emotions are pissed as hell that he is as at peace with the situation as he is, this time blowing sideways. The little, bloody foot-prints that he has been leaving are gone. Some blood splashes onto the sand as he staggers to a straighter pose and lurches on. It is gone within seconds, and he laughs again, a laugh that is full and throaty despite the fact that he hasn't had any water or food for god knows how long.

Nobody else is going to have to pay his debt for him. _Nobody_.


End file.
